7 minute read
APPETITE FOR DISRUPTION
A lot of thought and consideration has gone into every single detail here
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Vital signs all carefully monitored
driving it round endlessly added to this. I was adamant that I was having one before I even knew they were seen as cool by pretty much anyone and everyone who likes cars.”
Eager to get started, Kieran bought his first Mini back when he was 14 – a gold Mayfair – but soon realised that he’d bitten off more than he could chew with that particular example at that tender age. However, the urge to own a Cooper was getting more and more intense and, scraping together all of his pennies at the age of 17, he was able to buy the car you see here. Except that it, er, didn’t exactly look like this. Nope, quite a lot has happened over the last seven or eight years, to the extent that this Mini is essentially unrecognisable from what it was like when he first got his teenage hands on it.
“Despite looking rather fresh with a recent paint job, as with so many Minis it turned out to be quietly rotting from the inside out,” Kieran recalls. “The front subframe mounts ripped out the f loor due to rot in my first two years of driving, with various other welding repairs. I then took it off the road to fully restore it and well and truly fell down the rabbit-hole. Once the bodyshop got involved with it and
Quite an aggressive sight in your rear-view mirror... although he won’t be behind you for long
even say that the extensive rot was a blessing in disguise, as the full body resto served to achieve two things: firstly, it demonstrated what further potential there could be within this car. And secondly, having invested a sizable sum of cash into it, it was clear to Kieran that there could be no half-measures. This was a car to be built properly – the manifestation of that inherent and irrepressible ambition within him.
“I always planned to do a nut-and-bolt rebuild… but this came sooner rather than later after 19-year-old me sent it into a ditch and through several fence posts,” he admits. “So with the full shell restoration, I took the opportunity to upgrade and customise, with the Mk1 rear light conversion, the fuel filler blanked and LHD wiper holes blanked off, the interior light moved to the front, the boot light handle thing modified and hidden – J P Tuning took care of it all beautifully. And the more involved I became, the more tasty bits I was seeing from the likes of KAD and RetroSport, Specialist Components and so forth, which I could never resist.”
MAGPIE EYE
The appetite for shiny things was seemingly insatiable, but this was never
The carbs grab your attention, but there’s so much more to this detailed Swiftune 8-port build
just about a magpie eye and sights set on the showground. Kieran wanted a truly special engine for this car. Something seismic, something properly exciting – powerful, tractable, hungry for revs… so he put in a call to Nick Swift at Swiftune, and before he knew it the mechanical side of things was gathering pace at an incredible rate.
“I had my heart set on an 8-port,” he continues, “ but not wanting to go with fuel injection, I just decided to let the carbs hang out of the bonnet because I reckoned it looked awesome and I hadn’t seen anything of the kind at any shows – just the odd black-and-white photo of ’60s/’70s race Minis with carbs sticking out the front. So, Swiftune built the engine, and there were several hurdles along the way, one of which involved removing the engine again due to a billet mount fouling the dry deck outlet. After first running it up it became clear that exhaust heat was an issue, with the f loor and tunnel being hot enough to melt
Similar boot setup to the orange car in the next feature, interestingly
your shoe. I then had the manifold and mid-pipes ceramic-coated by Zircotec along with the heatshield to the bulkhead and the whole exhaust tunnel. A complete oversight on my part, but I really didn’t expect such an issue with an essentially off-the-shelf
BODY Rover British Racing Green, Ice White roof, bonnet modified for 8-port engine and carb clearance, carbon fibre arches, boot number plate light modified and concealed, LHD wiper holes welded and blanked, carbon wing mirrors with integrated indicators, DSN Classic RetroSport boot hinges and rear foglamp bracket, stock fuel filler hole welded up, Mk1 taillights ENGINE Built by Swiftune, 1,380cc, 8-port crossflow cylinder head, billet camshaft - modified to suit 8-port head, titanium pushrods with double valve springs, forged pistons, forged rods, ground and balanced billet steel crank, billet aluminium timing cover, duplex timing chain, twin 40 Weber DCOE carburettors, Metro-style rocker cover, water-cooling system dry-decked, Setrab external oil cooler, carbon fibre cooling fan, Maniflow 8-port manifold and centre-exit exhaust system, electronic distributor, uprated spark plug leads, uprated ignition coil, high-power starter motor, silicone coolant hoses, aluminium radiator, mix of solid and polybush engine mounts, DSN Classic RetroSport parts including: upper and lower engine steady bars, ignition coil bracket, alternator brackets, thermostat housing, water pump pulley, engine blanking plates, oil filter head, wiper motor cover, wiper motor bracket, hose plate, joiner tubes, steering column bracket, grease caps SUSPENSION Red Spot rubber cones, hi-los, adjustable-rate dampers, adjustable tie rods, adjustable-length bottom arms, adjustable rear camber brackets, K AD alloy rear radius arms, Force Racing alloy top arms, K AD alloy front swivel hubs, K AD alloy drive flange, DSN Classic RetroSport parts including: rear subframe mounting trunnions, front subframe mount kit, subframe tower bolts TR ANSMISSION 4-speed dog ’box, straightcut gearset, quick-shift selector, Quaife ATB differential, Featherlite lightened flywheel, uprated clutch BR AKES K AD 4-p ot c alip e r s , K AD 8 .4” ve nte d disc s , K AD a djus t able bias p e dal b ox , K AD rear disc conve r sion: singlepis ton c alip e r s with 7 ” single-skin disc s an d billet aluminium drive hub, G o o dri dge b rai de d line s , billet aluminium han db rake leve r, DSN Cl assic RetroSp or t han db rake qua drant s WHEELS AND T YRES 6.5x10” Force Racing V1 split-rims - billet aluminium centres anodised red, polished rims, 165/70 Yokohama Advan-032R tyres INTERIOR Cobra Monaco Pro seats, Sabelt harnesses, weld-in rollcage with additional strengthening ties to bodywork, rear seat cushions removed (bench remains), fuel tank relocated to spare wheel well, spare wheel moved to mounting on rear bench, interior light relocated, VDO fuel gauge, Smiths gauges: voltage, water temp, oil temp, oil pressure and clock, carbon fibre doorcards, carbon parcel shelf, carbon dash, Alcantara flocked dash rails and headlining, DSN Classic RetroSport door handle set, DSN Classic RetroSport pedals
modification. I don’t know what others with 8-ports do, but the Y-piece barely misses the f loor!”
It’s been a build beset with challenges and obstacles throughout, but of course that’s always going to be the way when you’re trying something different. It could be perfectly simple to do a by-thenumbers resto and achieve acceptable results, but there’s way too much passion tied up within this car’s back story to ever allow it to go down like that. This isn’t just a car to Kieran, it’s the culmination of a lifetime of passion and enthusiasm. It’s his destiny to own a cool and mould-breaking Mini, and the thing standing between the dream and the reality was a whole bunch of hard graft and problem-solving.
“The rest of all the build work and endless head-scratching was carried out by me,” he tells us. “It seemed at one point that nothing could ever fit without some form of modification; as just one
